Thursday, May 17, 2007

Is SOA all that?

Service Oriented Architecture seems to be the new buzz word everywhere!!! SOA will solve all the problems, everyone wants SOA -- or so I hear. Anyway, I remember similar claims when CORBA was coming to town. It was supposed to change the way IT does business. To me SOA is XML/SOAP based CORBA with evolving standards around it... I might be wrong.

Yet here we are and very little has changed. Well, maybe not, one thing is for sure -- IT complexity is growing at an alarming rate and I am wondering -- how much complexity can we a take until we loose control. IT shops take this concern seriously and spend big bucks trying to manage this complexity. I have a question --- Will introduction of SOA help IT better manage complexity and reduce cost or will it fail just like its predecessor? So far I see lots of traction in the field, but also a lot of skepticism.

What I do know for sure, is that organizations have to find new ways of leveraging technology and turn it into a competitive advantage. SOA is an experiment. I like experiments it keeps us busy and in business.